Preamble
"What is this paper used for?"
"I've always wondered why rice paper doesn't stick together when it's not dry when it's not dry.
......
On July 20th, in the China Xuan Paper Cultural Park in Jing County, Xuancheng City, the members of the summer social practice team of Anhui Normal University's Huirong Xinyun "Fusion Media Hui Culture + Rural Revitalization" threw out questions one after another, and Yao Yunkui, a "post-90s" rice paper drying worker, patiently answered them one by one. Don't look at your age, when it comes to these traditional crafts, you are familiar with them, you have insights, and from time to time you will put forward some of your own bold and innovative views.
Eleven years ago, Yao Yunkui quit his job in Shanghai to become a young man returning from a small town, learning the art of making rice paper. Along the way, he not only learned a good handicraft, but also used new media such as short videos to expose the skills of rice paper to the "cloud", and inherited the thousand-year-old skill of rice paper, which carries the charm of Huixiang and ink, with new ideas and new technologies.
Yao Yunkui demonstrates the paper unwrapping process □ A Xiuyi/photo
Yao Yunkui is working □ Wang Jiarui/photo
Learn the art of drying paper in the "deep water".
In 2013, at the age of 22, Yao Yunkui made a choice that many people would not be able to understand when most young people chose to work hard in the bustling metropolis – to leave Shanghai, return to the town, and enter a hot and humid rice paper factory that relied on manual labor, and learn the art of making rice paper. "There's no complicated why, it's just that I just like it, and I've been fascinated by these crafts since I was a child." Yao Yunkui said with a smile.
When he first became an apprentice in rice paper skills, Yao Yunkui worked hard to learn all the skills of rice paper making. Among them, he was most impressed by two processes, one was to fish for paper in the water, and the other was to dry the paper on the fire. Whenever winter comes, Yao Yunkui has to dip his hands into the biting cold water, and repeatedly return to the water and enter the water, often ending the day's work with a pair of red hands. "Drying paper" suffers from summer, in the scorching summer, the indoor temperature in the production workshop is usually as high as 40 to 50 degrees Celsius, Yao Yunkui often works hard in the high temperature, sweat wetting the placket is commonplace, "There is an old saying in our industry, that is, 'the baby who dries paper is not presentable'." Because in the summer, it's so hot that we have to wear shorts and go shirtless to work. Yao Yunkui said.
In the Cultural Park, Yao Yunkui is one of the few young people who has sunburned the most traditional adobe walls. The adobe wall is made of lime and refractory bricks, and the inside is a real fire, the temperature of the wall is higher than that of the steel plate, and the temperature of the fire can be as high as 100 degrees Celsius when measured with a thermometer. "The temperature is indeed very high, but there is no way, you have to endure it, a qualified craftsman must have this endurance!" In his paper-drying career, Yao Yunkui has persisted again and again, penetrated the minds of craftsmen from great countries, and rooted in the focus and persistence of fingertip skills.
When China Xuan Paper Co., Ltd. (formerly known as Hongxing Xuan Paper Factory) was openly recruiting employees, Yao Yunkui entered the factory with nearly 30 apprentices of his own age. After 10 years, in the end, only Yao Yunkui and another companion are still sticking to this road. "This craft must be inherited by young people, and as a young man, since I have learned this craft, I must learn it well!" Yao Yunkui consciously took the responsibility of inheriting the skills of rice paper on his shoulders, and adhered to the firm belief that "if you learn, you must learn fine, and only by learning can you pass it on", and made a commitment with a serious expression.
On this journey of "asking for hardships", Yao Yunkui sought a way of a craftsman who could endure hardships, calm his breath and calm down in the "deep water", and learned the craft of drying paper under gritting his teeth and persevering.
Putting rice paper on the "cloud" has received 130 million views
In the production workshop of China Xuan Paper Co., Ltd., 98% of the masters are 55 years old and above, and there are only a handful of paper dryers of the same age as Yao Yunkui. "In addition to squatting in the workshop, how can the younger generation pass on traditional skills?" In his 11-year paper-drying career, he used a mobile phone that can be connected to the Internet to shoot a short video of spreading the history and culture of rice paper for 7 years.
The transformation from a craftsman to a new media blogger came from a serendipitous opportunity. At that time, a foreign tourist came to visit the park and casually took a picture of Yao Yunkui's work. After uploading the video to the Internet, I didn't expect to win the love of many netizens, "At that time, I was thinking, if I shoot it myself, can I also shoot the craftsmen and masters in the fire park, so as to promote our rice paper culture?" There was no time to delay, Yao Yunkui acted quickly, from the selection of themes to the shooting materials, from video editing to copywriting design, from cover production to account operation, he slowly groped and studied alone.
"I used to want to shoot the masters who were carrying 180 pounds of raw materials to climb the mountain, and they generally got up at 2:00 a.m. every day, started working at 3:00, and started to go down the mountain at 6:30." In order to shoot the ideal video material, Yao Yunkui got up at 3:00 in the morning, packed his bags, and immediately drove to the production park to follow the shooting. "In the past few years, I have either been drying paper or on the way to shoot videos." Yao Yunkui said with a smile that he always wants to keep improving, so he basically spends his rest time shooting videos.
In fact, the videos created by Yao Yunkui are not as fine as the production or exquisite pictures, and they rely more on the word "real" to win praise from many netizens. Compared with the aesthetic shooting style, Yao Yunkui wants to record the real working state of the masters, capturing every action and detail; Shoot the 108 processes of rice paper production in a complete way, and think about how to photograph the change from a lump of pulp to a piece of paper in more detail; Recording the rice paper making process that is about to be lost will arouse the interest of more people and arouse the attention of more people. "I believe that if you shoot in more detail, netizens will be able to better understand our Chinese papermaking technology and how an authentic piece of rice paper is made!"
At present, Yao Yunkui's videos and live broadcasts have received the love of many netizens, and the highest number of views of a single video has reached more than 70 million, with a total of 130 million views on the whole network. With "Xuan Paper Skills" as the core theme of the short video, "Xuan Paper Production Process" as a clue, and the craftsmen and masters in the factory as the protagonists, Yao Yunkui "blied" the rice paper on the cloud, turning the new media account into a window for the spread of Xuan paper culture to the distance, breaking the barriers of time and space, so that more people can see why Xuan paper is "ink rhyme is ever-changing, paper has a thousand years of life".
Become a blogger and talk about rice paper culture online
"Everyone often says, the national liquor Moutai, the national paper Red Star, if you want to buy a real rice paper, then what should you pay attention to? I'm going to tell you more about it." Walking into the live broadcast room, Yao Yunkui turned into a new media blogger, online science popularization of the production process of rice paper, identification skills, etc. Sometimes, there will be a live demonstration of the rice paper making process, and with a certain process explanation, "The reason why our paper can be separated is because wild kiwi rattan juice is added to it, and this material can suspend the pulp and finally play the role of dividing the sheet." In front of the camera, Yao Yunkui was confident and generous, and talked eloquently.
In his work, Yao Yunkui's greatest pleasure is to answer questions for tourists, sometimes to answer the knowledge of rice paper making, and sometimes to provide reference suggestions for their paper selection and use, which also stimulates his curiosity to try the role of blogger. "Xuan paper is part of our papermaking technology and a business card of Anhui. Since someone watches the video, can I go to the video and explain it online for everyone? In this way, setting up a mobile phone, Yao Yunkui walked from offline to online, playing the role of a commentator, building a bridge between rice paper skills and distant netizens from "acquaintance" to "acquaintance".
In the live broadcast room, Yao Yunkui interacted with netizens by means of oral explanations, on-site demonstrations, and Q&A, which was not so much a live broadcast as a condensed essence of the boutique class, with rich knowledge points, vivid and interesting forms, and remarkable teaching effects, solving all kinds of doubts of netizens one by one. Yao Yunkui was also nicknamed "Red Star Cultural Tourism Xiaoyao" and "Xuan Paper Xiaoyao" by his friends.
"These titles are a way for everyone to express their like, in the face of the millennium rice paper culture, my mission is to spread it, upload the rice paper skills to the Internet cloud, so that more people know the production process of rice paper, so that more people can see this precipitation of thousands of years of excellent traditional Chinese culture." Yao Yunkui said.
"It's not easy to make paper, it's miserable. Fortunately, I have treasures, papermaking is invented, and rice paper has not rotted for thousands of years, so that the culture of China thousands of years ago can be preserved: Shi Mengmeng, calligraphy and painting are circulated. Yao Yunkui wrote this sentence in the introduction of the short video platform, and it was also invisibly engraved in his heart, urging him to unswervingly dry every piece of rice paper in his daily work, and unswervingly "post" the shining and dazzling new media business cards of the rice paper.
Members of the practice group interview Yao Yunkui (middle) □ A Xiuyi/photo
(Reporter Cheng Rongjuan, correspondent Li Meiying, Li Jiarong)